In this multicoloured kiddy playground of a hotel game centre, the yellowing of the candy cabs is most probably due to the wholesome forces of light and time, rather than the usual nicotine and sweat.
There's something surreal about playing shmups in what looks like the set of a Kyary Pamyu Pamyu video.
#KyaryPamyuPamyu 🤟
Photographer and writer covering Tokyo arcade life – the videogames, the metropolis and the people
Sega consoles were the best to look forward to – because Sega was always ahead of its time. Discs, 3D graphics, online multiplayer. Sega did them all too soon. And they did this: Sega World.
Japanese arcades are dripping with tar and nicotine. In fact, it’s said that the reason nineties candy cabinets keep going so long is that the plastics have transformed into a super-strengthened resin after decades of suspension in cigarette tar.
Something I love about Tokyo is the prevalence of handmade signs. It’s totally normal even for high-end department stores to stand staff-constructed cardboard beside the till with laminated announcements and explanations. But this is just silly…
Arcade racing cabinets seem pretty universal: very accessible, easy to export around the world. But here’s a series that’s very particular in its appeal, and hasn’t (properly) made it outside Japan.
Time blasts by. This is a 21st-century, networked, 3D, arena-based robo combat dreamboat by Capcom, playing on a cathode ray tube in a yellowing hulk of a Sega Blast City cabinet from the 1990s.
